American Shorthair: When Cats Sold for $50 During the Gold Rush
2 min read
This breed's working-cat ancestors weren't just tolerated — during a real 19th-century rodent crisis, they became a genuinely valuable, tradeable commodity.
A Genuinely Specific Piece of Gold Rush History
Worth knowing as real, documented economic history: during the 1849 California Gold Rush, miners paid roughly $50 each for proven hunting cats arriving on the ship SS Ohio — genuine money for a working animal in that era. Decades later, during San Francisco's 1884 rat plague, shorthaired cats sold for $50 to $100 each, with baskets of cats shipped by train specifically to supply desperate miners. This wasn't casual pet ownership — these cats were valued commodities during real rodent crises.
A Real, Documented Origin on the Mayflower
Historical records place cats among the passengers who disembarked the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, brought specifically to protect food stores from rats during the voyage — meaning this breed's ancestors were genuinely present at one of America's most foundational historical moments, well before the country existed.
An Honest Controversy Worth Knowing
Worth stating directly rather than glossing over: in the late 1950s, some Domestic Shorthair breeders secretly crossbred Persians into their lines specifically to alter body type and introduce a striking silver coloring. This caused real changes to the breed's traditional appearance and generated genuine controversy once discovered — a real breeding-integrity dispute within the breed's own history, not a uniformly celebrated development.
A Specific Naming Change Worth Knowing
The breed wasn't formally called "American Shorthair" until 1966 — the name change was specifically intended to distinguish registered, pedigreed cats from ordinary random-bred domestic shorthairs, given how visually similar the two can be. A genuine American Shorthair today is verifiable only through certified breed papers, not appearance alone.
A Real, Non-Obvious Etymology
Worth knowing as a specific historical curiosity: gray-coated cats of this working lineage were once called "Maltese cats" — not because they came from Malta, but because of a grey-blue cloth dye known as "Maltese blue" that their coat color resembled. Gray cats were also believed at the time to be superior hunters, adding to their particular desirability.
A Real, Verified Celebrity Connection
Mark Twain was a documented, enthusiastic cat owner, and his cats in surviving vintage photographs closely resemble the modern American Shorthair — a genuine historical thread connecting the breed to one of America's most famous writers.